Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)

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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, please note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals, and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals.

« Archives, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

The aim of the Village pump (idea lab) is to encourage the preliminary incubation of new ideas in a "non-polling" environment. When you have a new idea, it is not mandatory that you post it here first. However, doing so can be useful if you only have a general conception of what you want to see implemented, and would like the community's assistance in devising the specifics. Once ideas have been developed, they can be presented to the community for consensus discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).

The formation of this page, and the question of its purpose and existence, are the subjects of discussion on the talk page. Direct all comments on those topics there.

Translating Articles into Multiple languages' Wikipedias

see topic moved to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Translating_Articles_into_Multiple_languages.27_Wikipedias from its origin at the Village Pump, as suggested by Vgmddg, including subsections:

• "Same topic, different languages"
• "Translating Articles: Methods of Transfer"

which includes subsubsections:

• (1) Create a separate wiki for translation
• (2) Reenable Article Subpages
• (3) Design the infoboxes for easy translation
• (4) Teamwork of translation groups

Notice to discuss it here also given at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta_talk:Babylon#Translating_Articles_into_Multiple_languages.27_Wikipedias

Attention: Before we continue building on this idea I ask that we move this topic to Meta-Wiki or another location where we can get input from other language wikis. This idea will not work otherwise. Thank you. --vgmddg (look | talk | do) 22:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Pandelver (talk) 21:36, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup templates -- almost as bad as ads; reduction ideas?

As we all know, Wikimedia takes pride in not covering the site in advertisements. Ads take up screen space, are obstructive to readers, and are generally just annoying to see. As more and more time passes, this is exactly how I feel about the cleanup templates. I am not saying at all that we should get rid of them, but I think we need to find a way to greatly reduce them in space used — closer to what is used for {{Expand section}} with the ability to place them side by side rather than only each below the next.

Think of it this way: we don't want ads on the site because then every page would begin with something like this...

...but many pages needing more than the most basic cleanup already start with something like this...

...or like this...

How is this visually any more acceptable, particularly for non-editors who only visit to find a bit of information? — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 23:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Annoying on purpose. Visually they distract, and redirect attention to themselves. This serves three purposes: a) warn the reader that there may be factual or other problems with the article; b) alert readers who are potential editors that there's something they could fix, if only they clicked the 'edit' link for the first time...; c) alert current editors who come across an article (or indeed search by categories of tagged articles) what the specific problems and concerns are. Net benefit to the project. → ROUX ₪ 02:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Our rejection of advertisements is not based primarily on visual appeal, but editorial independence. Rich Farmbrough, 14:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC).

However we can if we wish do this:

Rich Farmbrough, 14:17, 16 February 2011 (UTC).

It's technologically possible to create expandable templates - a smallish floating template that would have the icon and a key phrase like 'Content dispute', 'Help needed', or etc, but could be clicked to give more details. Don't know if we'd want to do that, and it would be a fairly major undertaking, if only because we'd have to make sure that changes to the current templates didn't muck up any of the possibly thousands of pages these banners are currently on, but it is possible. --Ludwigs2 14:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Roux. Essentially, the ugliness is functional. Rd232 ^talk 19:12, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Usually, those templates only state the obvious anyway ("This article needs more references, blah, blah.") and I have rarely seen cases where an article was improved as a direct reaction to them. In most cases, somebody puts them on a page and then they stay there for years, because even if proper references have been introduced nobody dares remove the banners. It's really a social problem rather than a technical one: Some editors, instead of simply fixing/improving an article, prefer to tag it with a mostly useless cleanup template because that's less work for them than actually doing something about an article's deficiencies. These templates are also a cheap way to rack up a high edit count, which might explain why some editors are so fond of them. To which I say: WP:SOFIXIT. --Morn (talk) 20:07, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I've solved problems in response to a template, but usually because the article was already on my watchlist for some other reason, and I saw the addition. On the other hand, tags that aren't addressed promptly are probably pretty worthless, if not permanent fixtures. (Exercise for the reader: Go open 100 articles in, say, Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2006 and see how many are incorrectly tagged as containing zero sources.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

"I have rarely seen cases where an article was improved as a direct reaction to them." - how can you tell? This sort of anecdotal handwaving is worthless, unless for some reason you think it valid to only count cases where someone immediately fixes the entire problem and has sufficient confidence in the resolution to remove the template. Of course there's nothing to stop you doing a statistically valid study to determine the impact of cleanup templates over different periods (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year...) if you want... These things take time, and without attention-getting templates, they take even longer. Rd232 ^talk 01:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

They say the obvious... to a human viewer. But the point of a cleanup template is that it enables an editor in the future to find it (through categories and backlinks from WP:TC etc.). And I think the suggestion that the only reason editors tag with cleanup templates is because they are lazy edit count whores is flexing WP:AGF! I've tagged a few articles with WP:TC templates, and the reason I do so is because I'm not necessarily knowledgable about what makes a reliable source for that topic. If I'm watching TV and doing some anti-vandal work while the advert break is on and run across an article that needs obvious cleanup, being able to notify other editors that it has some set of problems is quite useful. Similarly, if I run across a stack of new and unreferenced articles on, say, French politics: I don't know what counts as a reliable source in that topic, but it would be nice if the people who do know could find the article and fix problems with it. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:25, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

(First, on a side note, reading my posts I know that the tone of my typically-long ones can sound a bit snobbish; I assure you that is not the intent. My apologies in advance, though, just in case.) I can see Roux's point, but I think the only reason for validity is because it is what we are used to seeing. On the "Feature Articles" is a little icon in the upper right hand corner. Typically the same is true for admins' pages. We also receive those administrative notices in or watch lists that we can dismiss when we choose. None of them are large, yet I doubt they go unnoticed by the majority. It's not about size; it's about effectiveness. The two aren't always the same. Mentioning again the two examples shown here already:

Can we not see those? Do we think that others cannot see them? What do the larger templates give except for an extended explanation of the template's purpose which is essentially the same as what the link always found in each template provides? If the person doesn't know what "Needs references" means, they can click the link and find out. They don't need it mentioned in the template along with a link visible in the same template for them to click to tell them the exact same thing in more detail. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 22:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

A significant part of the purpose is to turn readers into editors. The "please help" bits are not optional extras. Rd232 ^talk 01:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point (in the way that you stated the first sentence.) I admit I had never thought about it in full from that direct angle — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 07:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I liked that point that banners end up sitting for months or years, even after the problems are gone, or of decidedly little interest even to the person who made the banner. Maybe these are good reasons that banners should evolve over time to get smaller?-Tesseract2 (talk) 20:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Some (not I) could argue the opposite. If the banners are what grab attention to what needs editing and something hasn't been edited after a long time, then maybe the banners just need to be bigger (ha!) But seriously, I do still feel something could be done. This all sparked from a post a ran across recently by User:MuZemike proposing more uniform templates that (or based on what) he had created (all found here). I agree with his concept, but by chance they are also smaller than current:

... but my view leads to even smaller:

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help us improve it if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions.

This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it.

This article is written like an advertisement. Please help rewrite it from a neutral point of view. Blatant advertising that would require a fundamental rewrite to become encyclopedic, should be marked for speedy deletion. using {{db-spam}}.

Please expand this article using the suggested source(s) below. More information might be found in a section of the talk page.

A bit crude in my coding making it easier for me to create these, but you get the idea. I still feel they are easily noticeable. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 06:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. It's need: copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling • rewriting from a neutral point of view. (Blatant advertising that would require a fundamental rewrite to become encyclopedic, should be marked for speedy deletion. using {{db-spam}}) • expanding by using the suggested source(s) below. Please help us improve it if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions.

Hmm? Przykuta (talk) 17:21, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

haha... erm... no. :D — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 06:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Icons

Perhaps the various tags could be replaced with icons located to the immediate right of the article title.

What I envisage is icons of the same font size as the article title, and in the form of a relevant image covered by a red crossed circle. The nature of each icon may be stated as alternative text (e.g. "This article needs...").

To avoid too many such icons, the current tags could be simplified down to a handful. For example, the orphan and dead end tags could be subsumed into a insufficient links icon. And all the references, refimprove, unreferenced, references-blp tags, some of which duplicate each other, could be subsumed into a insufficient references icon.

When adding an icon, an editor could be forced to enter a concern parameter indicating what is wrong. The concern, (in either WP:USETEMP or tag form) could then be automatically entered into the talk page. Once saved, each icon may then act as a link to the relevant section in the talk page. After all, shouldn't these sorts of tags be on the talk page. Isn't that what the talk page is for. How many times have we come across a tagged article and found that the talk page hasn't yet been created or if it has, it was only to add it to a WikiProject.

The obvious criticism I can see of this idea is that icons may be less noticeable than tags. However, considering how dominating tags can be, almost anything would be less noticeable. Nonetheless, I think readers would soon notice these icons as they wouldn't appear identically on every page if at all. And, of course, serving the same function as tags, they'd still add articles to hidden categories.

LordVetinari (talk) 03:22, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I just re-read User:Shanes/Why tags are evil and it seems he already mentioned icons there. Must have been at the back of my mind when I thought of the idea described above. Thought I'd add this in case I get accused of stealing ideas. LordVetinari (talk) 05:08, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing me to that essay. I had never read it before. Do we really know that the size of the tags (or the tags at all) draw in new people to edit? More specifically, do we know that the tags draw in new people to make edits specifically focused around hoping to get that tag removed? How can we possibly know if we only stick with "how it's always been done" instead of taking a chance? My personal opinion is that smaller tags would not change a thing for better or worse relative to the already-declining number of new editors. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 06:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak for others, of course, but tags didn't motivate me to edit. I read articles on Wikipedia for years before I started editing. Back then, I usually ignored the tags as nothing more than meaningless maintenance stuff. As a reader, it meant nothing to me. When I did eventually edit, it was in response to my own opinion of the article content, not others' opinions as presented through tags. More so as a reader, tags were to me little different to the ads that clog up the dictionary.com website: the reader has to search through the page just to find the text. That's as annoying as google search results that don't lead to pages relevant to the requested search.

My view is that maintenance tags have three purposes:

• To 'tag' an article for maintenance (i.e. add it to a hidden category)
  • Icons will do this as well as anything
• To advertise to the reader that an article has been recognised as being below standard
  • Icons, in the form I've described, may fulfil the same purpose. This is especially likely as readers will come to notice that not all pages have icons and those that do don't necessarily have the same ones.
• To encourage readers to become editors.
  • As mentioned above, tags had no effect in my case. I also don't think people need to be told that a crap article is a crap article in order to motivate them to edit it. People join because it fulfils their needs. That their actions also usually serve Wikipedia's is, in my namesake's words, "a happy bonus". I don't believe people join in because we've just presented them with an article that needs references or needs a copyedit. If they are going to join in, they'll likely start in an area that is of interest to them and then, they'll probably begin by correcting a typo or rephrasing a sentence in an otherwise passable article. To put it in perspective, maintenance is difficult work. For example, I occasionally go on de-orphaning patrols but, despite it seeming like a simple task, different orphaned articles can present different problems requiring different solutions. Just like wikification, refimproving and the others, it is not an easy task likely to motivate the casual reader. Let's entice them with the easy stuff. Once they're seduced, then they'll feel inclined to do the hard yards.

One last thought: I think an editable encyclopedia appeals to that part in many of us that feels compelled to correct spelling mistakes in the newspaper (e.g. see Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

One last question: How many editor's (IP or otherwise) began by dealing with an issue mentioned in a maintenance tag?

LordVetinari (talk) 13:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I was asked by CobraWiki to give my views on this. I believe strongly that turning tags meant for editors into small icons would be an improvement. Tags that warn readers about factual controversy or bias are ok, I think. But all those "fix-me" tags nagging about whatever someone felt like nagging about is not worth the distraction and article ugliness the big boxes bring. The style manual states that articles should begin with defining or explaining the topic. These tags goes against that. In general I'd like article space to be for the readers, and complaints or suggestions to editors on how to improve an article should be made on the talk page, not with big flashy boxes on top of the article. --Shanes (talk) 20:41, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback but thank you especially for "loaning" your idea (see my second edit, above). LordVetinari (talk) 13:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Shanes. That's an interesting point you bring up about two types of tags being used in different ways. I certainly agree about the use of the talk page over the article space being more logical for the boxes (particularly since the talk page is where you have to discuss the issues if needed anyway. If the point of view remains that the templates are there to grab attention and too many members keep believing that those tags have more worth in encourage enough people enough to edit and then join and edit than obstruction by being there (which I believe is flawed reasoning as mentioned above), then not even that sort of change would be placed in effect. I'd at least like to at least see a trail period, but that would only happen if some details could be hashed out here otherwise I have no idea if many others agree with the idea (prior to starting a poll). — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 02:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the idea would be more successful if the end result could be rolled out in stages. The concept, as described earlier, actually consists of several ideas. Consider,

• Icon/tag design and layout → Don't know what mechanics are involved but changing from one to the other should be a simple case of altering some template pages.
• Icon/tag simplification (eg. subsuming {{references}} & {{refimprove}} into a new {{Insufficent references}} icon) → Technically, this is a separate issue, and could be rolled out anytime.
• Icons/tags automatically linking to talk page → As above, some tinkering with the template code should enable this. It would also require a major rewrite of relevant tutorials, WP namespace pages etc. Perhaps it could be made easier with the appearance of a messagebox whenever someone tries to add an old-style tag. I expect this aspect of the concept will provoke most discussion.

All in all, justifying the replacement of tags with icons should be the easy part. LordVetinari (talk) 03:18, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Blog

maybe wikipedia should have a fully editable blog to post on. it should be called something that people can remember, so that they can go and post whenever they want to, knowing that nothing of theirs will be deleted from the blogging area. here is my idea for an art blog:

                                                 Art blog 

Info of the week: Caitlin Fox is an artist who specializes in streetart (grafitti) and classical art. She has kept an art diary ever since she was 10 and fills it with amazing sketches and drafts. an example of her work shall be saved shortly. i shall blog again later after I find some of Caitlin's work in digital format on the internet. stay tuned for more on the art blog, new to the blogging area.

Comments

Jo348- hey wikipeeps! Love Caitlins work, i've seen it before wit my own eyes, her art skills are awesome!

Annabelle689- where did u get that - wikipeeps? - sounds cool. i'm setting up a vote for if you want an art blog in wikipedia, it may get more viewers:

so far, 163 people like this

Like   Dislike

Anza64- i'm definately voting for the art blog, might be interesting. see ya wikipeeps! ya, that is cool, maybe it'll catch on!

Bennyboy6- hey wikipeeps, it totally caught on! i'm all heads up for the blog thing, maybe if wikipedia doesnt let you do it, you could make a seperate website!

Annabelle689- yeah, i'm working on it right now, i'll post the adress in the sandbox, temperary art blog for now, anyway.

(this is an example)

Desn't fit into my image of an online encyclopaedia. There are plenty of other places for blogs. HiLo48 (talk) 11:09, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Please see WP:Perennial proposals#Allow discussion about the topic of the article; the same objections apply even if the "forum"/"blog" were a separate namespace. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Sticky Notes for Easier Editing

From Wikipedia:Sticky notes One thing that Wikipedia could definitely use is Sticky notes

What are sticky notes? On every header, next to 'edit', there would be a button that says 'sticky highlight'. Just Click, Highlight some text, and leave a Comment. Then a sticky note (a TINY little yellow square) will appear on the right margins. Other readers can click it, it will open and reveal its comment, and the text it relates to will highlight.

Why? For one, it's good salesmanship. How do you take someone who reads wikipedia sometimes and turn them into a frequent editor? The answer will normally be one little step at a time. And if you're reading some random page that says something suspicious, who could resist highlighting it and saying "is that true?? What about this website..." Hell, we could even give people collour options; 'blue for tiny suggestions', 'yellow for most comments', 'red for potentially serious issues'. Right now, however, the first little step to make a direct contribution is STILL to be STUCK trying to figure out Wikipedia's editing system. That's insane. Many readers will hit edit, see some benign code for an image or header, and say "screw that". Which is exactly what I hear; "Yeah it was false, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out how to change it". Wikipedia desperately needs to involve, and gain access to the minds of, people who care about topics (even if not wikipedia's cause, yet).

But what about...Vandalism? Same rules and precautions as the page (bots are welcome to help). And it's another chance to say "thanks for the comment! Here are some reasons you might want an account..."

This is the right place to get thoughts/suggestions on this, right? -Tesseract2 (talk) 20:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

That's potentially interesting, but stickies would probably need to be linked to the talkpage somehow. I have a feeling someone clever might figure out a way to do this without requiring a software change - anyone got any thoughts on whether that's possible? Rd232 ^talk 20:38, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

How do you imagine the highlighting would work? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 21:00, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Confusing programming shouldn't be our goal - I want us to be thinking "the absolute EASIEST and FASTEST way someone can leave input on what they just read". I think sticky notes are it.

That having been said, I'm not decided on how the highlighting would work and I do not think it is as vital. What I do know is that I don't want them to have to copy and paste text into a sticky note box because that might be too slow. It would be great if readers could drag a sticky note cursor over some text, then Wikipedia generates a sticky note near the right margins.

The sticky note itself could have very BASIC options. Like colour coded for type of note (blue for idea, yellow for warning, red for vital problem). Maybe the sticky note could be devided into 3 textboxes too: text from wiki page (autogenerated based on highlight??), your comment, any sources.

Dunno what you guys think of any of that...-Tesseract2 (talk) 18:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

One concern I have is that, however tiny the little highlights may be, I'd find them distracting if there are more than the odd one, like I also do now with articles^[57] that have too many^[58] in-line citations.^[59] However, this idea seems to have a similar intention as Part 1 of a proposal I threw up in the air on the strategy wiki: strategy:Proposal:Raising and resolving article quality issues – where it seems to have fallen with a thump on the floor: only one anonymous positive reaction.  --Lambiam 13:23, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Politics show -short transcription, methodology advice and help needed.

I contribute to articles on UK East Midland MPs. The area is a keen marginal battleground and the Politics Show is one of the best ways of seeing a new MP in action. The most recent is Nicky Morgan (politician) as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Universities minister supporting very large increases in tuition fees. I simply don't have another source comparable in quality or importance but transcripts aren't available except to contributors apparantly due to cost though the souce meets wp:verifiable requirements.
Betty Logan on WP:RSN came up with the excellent idea that I could include a transcript on the talk page which I've done. I also have a 1.6Mb MP3 recording which I could email or whatever.
Betty suggested I should ask a couple of volunteers to verify it -and to test people's reaction, yet to be achieved but I am strongly in favour of sources being easily checkable, particularly for WP:BLP.
FormerIP also suggested putting it forward here. Any comments welcome. JRPG (talk) 17:41, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Sounds suspiciously like a copyright issue to me. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. I'd like a legal opinion but this is only 6 minutes out of a 1 hour program. It would be even less if in-line corrections -which normally accompany live speech are removed. JRPG (talk) 17:09, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Portals: is there any point?

I'm struggling to work out if there is any point in portals. I looked at some page view statistics and compiled this little table:

Page	Page views	Portal views
Philosophy	7,099,200	341,407
Christianity	8,488,131	302,499
Java (software platform)	497,101	33,120
Linux	7,822,309	88,783

Does anyone actually use portals? It would seem that the article is the portal. WP:P says they are "useful entry-points to Wikipedia content". Compared to 'see also' sections and the category system, are they actually doing that job effectively? Do portals need to be rethought?

I looked at the source of a portal as I was thinking about making one for a topic I'm interested in and it was... pretty intimidating to edit. —Tom Morris (talk) 01:46, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak to whether portals (in general) are doing the job to their fullest extent, but I do see them as helpful for the person(s) who want to feel more like part of a community—instead of an individual editor going at it alone—and for focusing several smaller ideas into a wider perspective. In essence, they can help to create a "game plan" on what could be done next to be helpful to the general subjects' articles. Unfortunately, it's all a matter of having enough interest going into the general subject matter in the first place. I joined a U.S. State portal once because the individual topics that it were connected to it were being spammed in more than effectively edited and thought others' views would help to fix that, but I was alone in there as well. I would assume the same case for other portals where the individual topics have little interest, the portal isn't going to fix that. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 20:25, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Portals can serve as an introduction to a given subject that's a little more hands-on and random, e.g. a music portal will probably not dwell much on music theory but link to artist or composer biographies or sample audio. Like the WP main page, portals serve as an entry point, so they are allowed to e.g. feature fun trivia ("Did you know?") which is otherwise discouraged on WP. Most readers probably simply overlook those portal links at the bottom of WP articles, presumably that's why access numbers are relatively low compared to articles. The other issue is that when portals were first introduced, content had to be changed manually from time to time. That proved largely infeasible and many portals were updated only rarely after Wikipedia's 2007/2008 activity peak passed. It might take people a while to figure out that rotating content is now the norm and that the staleness problem has thus been largely solved (unless you've seen every available bit of random content of course). --Morn (talk) 21:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

CobraWiki, are you talking about portals, like Portal:Philosophy or WikiProjects, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy? I don't think I've ever seen a portal that had anything that could be considered a community. Portal talk:Philosophy has not had a single comment on it since last June.

I think portals are essentially a failed concept. At best, it was a good idea poorly executed. They require significant amounts of time to set up and they're very lightly used. They don't serve as an effective entry point since, except for the handful linked directly from the main page, you have to go to an article first to get a link to the portal and often the link is at the end of the article.

Editing portals is much more difficult than articles. The portal pages themselves are typically giant messes of HTML, wikitables, and parser functions. With many it's not at all clear how to go about adding new content to the selected article/image features. Mr.Z-man 04:54, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Graph by Guoguo12.

New graph on right showing portal views (blue) and their related articles' views (red). Guoguo12--Talk--  21:39, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Solution against misclicking

Many times when I want to click on "Show preview," I keep on forgetting and click "Save page." There could be a confirmation popup that prevents this something like:

Are you sure you want to make this edit?
☑ Don't show this message again

173.183.79.81 (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Unregistered users use the site's default user preferences, and I believe many would object to this as the default setting – yet another hurdle to editing a page for the sake of preventing a minor annoyance. However, your idea would work as a Wikipedia user script (for logged in users only) or as a Greasemonkey script (have to set it up on every computer you edit Wikipedia from). PleaseStand ^(talk) 03:53, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

But we could have different default settings for registered and unregistered users. When unregistered users start editing a page, they also see a message box that registered users don't see.  --Lambiam 12:30, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Delete/blank Old IP talk pages?

I just stumbled up on Wikipedia:Database reports/Old IP talk pages. That database report contains "Old IP talk pages where the IP has never been blocked and has not edited in the past year and where the IP's talk page has not had any activity in the past year, has no incoming links, and contains no unsubstituted templates"

In short these are mainly IP's who made a few edits, received a warning and then never edited again. I propose we get a bot to delete or blank these pages, for their continued existence serves absolutely no purpose that I can see. Yoenit (talk) 13:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems that these pages where originally eligible for deletion under wp:CSD#U2, but that was later changed to blanking (Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_9#IP_talk_pages). This seems to have been done with AWB for a while, but not recently as far as I can find. Yoenit (talk) 14:12, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Template to request comment from a user

Sometimes I will make a change and be reverted, so I start a discussion on the article talk page as per the BRD cycle. Obviously I want to make sure the user who reverted me is aware of this discussion and hopefully they contribute to it. Is there a template available to request a comment on the topic that I can post on the user's talk page? The {{talkback}} template is close, but I'm not sure it is appropriate in these cases since it implies the discussion is only for that user. –CWenger (talk) 04:12, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, how about just writing a note on the user's talk page? One sentence shouldn't take much longer than using a template, especially since you'd have to write the article's title in the template anyway. It probably doesn't happen that often (I mean, it happens a lot on Wikipedia, but any given editor is probably not doing this several times a day). Herostratus (talk) 04:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course it is not a lot of work to write a comment, but I still think it would be nice to have a template, very similar to {{talkback}} but not quite the same. –CWenger (talk) 15:22, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Just write a message, But {{talkback}} can be used for discussions on non-user talk pages too. Fences&Windows 02:25, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the above replies to just write them a customized note, but check out this see also section for various templates. I think Template:Please see might be what you're looking for. -- œ^™ 05:30, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Date autoformatting without linking

The advantage of date linking was the autoformatting for people with a strong preference for a specific date format – or a strong aversion to some other format. The main disadvantage (IMO) is lots of pointless links. Another stated disadvantage is that autoformatting may conceal date-format inconsistencies if some dates on a page are autoformatted while others are not – but on the other hand, date-format inconsistencies arise anyway, and could actually be reduced by consistent use of autoformatting.

The idea is simple (even if its implementation may not be): use template markup, like {{15 January 1900}}, for dates to be autoformatted according to a user's preferences, like {{#formatdate:15 January 1900}} does now – without creating a link. So {{15 January 1900}} and {{January 15, 1900}} would display the same for a given user, and differently for another user with a different date-format preference.

This would then mean that "normal" templates, living in template namespace, cannot have a name that is a date (currently only the redirect page {{September 11}}, I think, which is linked to from only a few pages, but I haven't checked all names of the form YYYY-MM-DD). This is, I feel, a minor issue; we can also have no template {{PAGENAME}} etcetera.

I don't want to raise a discussion here on whether this is a good idea or not, but rather on whether this is something worth discussing – perhaps it has been proposed elsewhere before and beaten to death with a frozen trout, or there is an obvious showstopper that I've overlooked – and if so, what is the appropriate forum, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date autoformatting, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), or someplace else?  --Lambiam 12:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

New Permission

Moved to: User:Ebe123/Protected editor.

WikiConferences

Has anyone proposed having planning conferences for projects dedicated to specific (say) category of articles?

The idea would be to produce a plan for editing a range of articles in a category so they would all be consitent in presentation.

Such a conference would offer a way to resolve, or at least mitigate many conflicts that arise when no prior discussion had taken place.

In technical terms it would require halting all editing on all articles until conclusion of the conference.

The conference would be conducted (say) over a period of a month, allowing even the busiest of editors to attend.

In a rather bold suggestion I would say that even indefinitely blocked editors that had contributed to the subject area in a positive way could be allowed to attend under certain provisions KoakhtzvigadMobile (talk) 02:58, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Census Data

Would it be possible to automatically format articles so that census data is automatically updated? Example:

"Bigfoot is a census-designated place (CDP) in Frio County, Texas, United States. The population was 304 at the 2000 census. "

Obviously, that information is 11 years old and could be updated.